Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet 2)

“Believe me, I know that,” she answers. “He was my reverent soulmate. And you’re an arrogant sociopath bent on destroying my whole family.”

She pauses, her emotions radiating over our mate bond, both bitter and sweet. “But he’s inside of you. He has to be. And that’s why I’m doing this. To get him back. So that you, me, and our son can be the family he promised we’d be if I survived this birth.”

My flame flickers at her words. And once again I’m assailed with fantasy images. The two of us, sitting upon our thrones. Raising our son to rule over both the drakkon and the mutated wolf primates. Mating nightly, even outside of breeding.

My male works strain inside my scaled folds. The possibilities seducing me, along with her voice inside of my head. “All you have to do is say please.”

Such a small word. No more than six Romanized letters stood between me and the pleasure I would know inside of her.

But then my father’s voice reminds me, “I paid your mother reverence after I seeded her with you, as every drakkon does. But in the end, her death was a cause for celebration. During our short time together, I became a drakkon crazed. My duties as Royal Overlord, my ambitions—they all fell to the wayside. With her death came relief from that obsession, along with a son who will go even further than myself. Remember this when you are fated to your own mate. No matter what time period you are fated to, your most important mission…your duty…is to find a way to make our bloodline king and sire a son to continue that line. This I believe only you can do, my son.”

My father spoke these words upon me in the utter dark of night. It had been the eve before our first battle with the wolf mutations. An easy battle that he believed would be won in a rout.

He’d been more concerned with instructing me toward saving not only us exiles from what the Terrible Destroyer had wrought, but also our planet. He wanted nothing less than for me to change the course of drakkon history. And after several millennia on this planet, learning to control my infamous flame, he’d believed I could do it.

Drakkon forget nothing. I still recall clearly the burn of bright pride in my chest flame as I rushed over the mountain, so eager to make all my father’s grand visions come true.

I also remember what happened to those reveries of glory soon after I flew over that mountain. They had turned into a pile of ash at the sight of a wolf mutation running his sword into the drakkon I revered most.

My father had instantly reshelled, but even before that, I knew this wound would be more than his shell could handle. He would die if I did not fly him directly to the medical units in the glacier station we’d established above Zone 4. I’d thought of nothing but saving my sire. And I’d run toward him with such urgency, I had been wholly unprepared for the attack of another mutation in dog form.

The sword had been wielded by Ola’s father, Fenris, now the so-called Alpha King of Michigan. And her other father, the Michigan beta Olafr…he had been the dog who had prevented me from getting my father to the glacier station in time to save his life.

My father’s flame, his belief in me…they had both been extinguished upon that field. Because of Ola’s fathers. Because of the Betrayer King.

Drakkon forget nothing.

Since that morn, I have thought of my sire daily. The visceral ache of his loss, the void he left behind—it has not been healed by time as the upright primates claim. It has grown into a festering wound inside of me. And it is an injury that can only be soothed by the revenge I must wreak.

No, I will not say please.

I will not exchange my pride for the pleasure of mating with Ola. For then what would she seduce me into next? The answer was as obvious as the shackles around my wrist.

First came please. Then would come a request to spare her fathers…and only death would keep me from exacting my revenge upon them. Well, death and…

I push all thoughts of the alternative from my head and resolve to stick to my original scheme. I must get strong again. Then I must imprison her and break her, just as I planned to before.

“Do you plan to starve me because I refuse to utter your unnecessary courtesy word?” I ask her with a bored tone, feigning as if I am more interested in the food she has brought me than any pleasure she might offer.

It is a triumph to see the way her shoulders deflate. I’m aware I am being what the anthros call petty. But I find it very satisfying this eve to act in such a fashion.